Recap and Menu – Page 14 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: Back to school!!!!

A welcome sight – the school bus fleet back on the roads! And also – the trees starting to bloom!

On Monday, the nine year old went back to in person school. It’s such a fraught decision, and no one-size fits all choice; every family needs to see what is best for them. So we looking at CDC guidelines and weighing our sense of risk against the stress that distance learning was causing for everyone – we knew that sending her back was the right choice for our family. She was so happy to see her friends again, though only about a third of her class elected to return to in person learning. The look of joy on her face at the end of every day helps me know that we made the right choice. At least the right choice for now. It might not be the right choice in two weeks, or three week, or what not, but it is the right choice for now.

So this week was about, again, adjusting and finding a new rhythm.

There is the commute to school. I don’t love having to drive up and down the freeway four times a day – actually only twice because I come home on local roads – but it felt like a more controlled environment than the school bus.

There is the morning routine and having to get used to leaving the house again.

There is the way my day is now defined by drop off and pick ups – which I think is helpful for me to focus my energy, but at the same time I still feel a little lost on how best to use the time.

I’ve decided that I want to visit as many of the parks in our county as possible, so after drop off, I will take the four year old and the baby to a playground.

The baby is frighteningly adept at climbing play structures. She loves going down slides. The four year old has gotten used to being asked to catch her at the bottom. He stands there with his arm outstretched as she come wooshing down the slide, colliding with him. He valiantly tries to keep upright while not letting his little sister hit the ground, and usually he succeeds. Watching sibling interaction has been one of the great joys of the pandemic.

My phone finally had to be replaced this week. I’ve had the same iPhone 6 for almost five years and The Husband tells me that it’s time. I’m a little resentful because I feel like things should last longer than five years, but the touch screen stopped working, so I guess he’s right. I tried to get by using voice command for a while, but it was getting a little ridiculous.

The whole process of getting a new phone was somewhat frustrating. I remember it being a lot easier five years ago – but now it seems that you need a lot more additional things just to be able to function. I feel like a curmudgeon about the whole thing.

Anyhow, I have a new phone and everything transferred smoothly, except for my Whatsapp which I didn’t realize had to be backed up separately. Oops. Actually there is something almost disappointing in how seamless my new phone set itself up. The new phone looks almost exactly like my old phone and I find myself missing that sense of “new” that usually comes with upgrading devices. It’s an odd sensation – like the new phone is wearing the same clothes as the old phone.

Some fun weekend adventures:

The husband had to work over the weekend, so I took the kids to the local Botanical Gardens and playground. So many signs of spring! The nine year old spotten some frog eggs in the stream. There was sunshine and fresh air and trees still bare, but starting to bud. The baby went down the slides at the big kids playground. Not the two story high one, but the smaller big one.

And there was this meditation that I found lovely:

On Sunday, we tried to take the kids to watch planes land; there is a playground near the airport where you can almost get your eyebrows shaved by landing planes. Unfortunately the parking lot was full, so we went to a playground around the corner though the view of planes wasn’t as spectacular at that playground. On the way, we got milkshakes and fries. It was probably in truth a touch too cold for milkshakes, but they were still tasty.

Steak ‘n’ Shake! Mid-afternoon indugence.

The baby has started asking to wear a mask when we go out. By “ask” I mean she hands it to us and makes her little insistent seal barking sounds. (She is still not talking, though she will repeat “dada” and “mmmm” (milk), and “baba” (for bao bao, Mandarin for “Pick me up” or “Hug)). I feel a little self conscious about her wearing a mask; is it overkill? – but on the other hand, she will have to start wearing one in six months, so I’m glad that she is okay with it, and it seems safe.

Fun project: Inspired by a conversation with my friend Kristen, who is a preschool teacher – I decided I wanted to try my hand at making butter. Holy cow it actually works! I wasn’t sure it was going to work because it took a lot of shaking and since I used a stainless steel jar I couldn’t see the progress. The kids lost interest after a couple minutes, so I kept going. It was a somewhat act of faith for me to keep shaking. I had made whipped cream from shaking before, so going from liquid cream to the smooth and thick whipped cream was expected. But then I thought – where does it go from here? And I keep shaking and shaking, the jar is soundless as I shake it. And then it becomes this kind of rough, chunky whipped cream. And I think, “That looks gross….” But I close up the jar and keep shaking. And at some point, there is a sloshing sound, and I open up the jar and see:

I’m sure there is some kind of metaphor here for theatre and art – about shaking and shaking and and having faith that the results will be consumable, even if the midway point looks chunky and clunky and messy.

What we ate:

Saturday: Pasta with jarred red sauce.

Sunday: Tofu banh mi Bowls with noodles

Monday:Chickpeas and Kale on Barley from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Fast.

Tuesday: Shrimp, Fennel and White Bean Stew from Mark Bittman’s VB6 cookbook.

Wednesday: Green beans and tofu stir fry w/ brown rice.

Thursday: Pav Bhaji from Meera Sodha’s Made in India. The Husband called this Indian Manwich – basically it’s a vegetable mash of eggplant, cauliflower, and potatoes cooked in cumin, coriander, garam masala, tumeric and amchur (we used chana masala powder instead). The whole things is slathered on buns and eaten topped with red onion and cilantro with a squeeze of lemon. Everyone asked that this be put into our meal rotation!

Friday: pizza and That Darn Cat! I’ve been borrowing from the library some of the Disney movies that I watched growing up. The four year old thought this movie was hilarious.

Weekly recap + what we ate – getting out of town

Sunrise on the C&O Canal tow path and the lockhouse where we stayed.

The nine year old had a surprise non-instructional day at the beginning of the week, followed by two days of asynchronous learning. In layman’s terms that meant she didn’t have to go to school for three days. So we left town.

I booked us to stay a night at a lockhouse. These are historic houses along the C&O canal that were built to house the lock keepers and their families. Seven of them have been restored and furnished with period appropriate furniture by the C&O Canal Trust, and can be booked for a stay. I had read about these a while ago and something about the historic and rustic nature of them really appealed to the romantic in me. So when I was looking for a place to take the kids for an overnight, a lockhouse struck me as the perfect pandemic get away since they are remote and only one party stays in at a time. So after dithering for a couple days, I booked one about an hour away and packed the kids up for an adventure.

We first went hiking at Catoctin National Park. I chose a hike that was less than a mile so that the baby would be able to walk the whole way. The hike was colder than I had anticipated – I had forgotten how quickly a change in altitude and make temperatures plummet. There was still a good amount of snow cover on the ground. In the end, though, we didn’t get too far. We came across a pile of boulders and the two older kids just wanted to spend their time climbing and scrambling. Seeing them figure out how to scale to heights was actually pretty awesome.

We got to the lockhouse mid afternoon. It was spare and rustic, and oh so quiet. The house had electricity, but no indoor plumbing. I knew about this going in, but I don’t think I fully realized the simple luxury of indoor plumbing until I had to spend a day without it. I had anticipated having to use a portable toilet, but then there were things like washing dishes and hands, draining pasta, and brushing your teeth, that are definitely easier when the water has a place to drain away.

We spent our daylight hours strolling along the Potomac and walking along and in the abandoned locks. The locks have been abandoned for almost 100 years an in that time forests and meadows have grown in them. Looking at them, I was really struck by how little time it takes for a forest to grow if people let nature do its thing.

In the evening we made a fire – I hadn’t brought marshmallows because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make a fire. The kids really wanted one, though, so I did make one after dinner. And then another one the next morning. I did have some sliced apples, so I wrapped them in foil, brushed them with honey and bacon grease (the only kind of fat/oil I had on hand) and cooked them over the campfire. They were really tasty. Though, I suspect most things are tasty when eaten outdoors and by a roaring fire.

We didn’t sleep much that night. The kids weren’t used to being somewhere so dark and quiet and it was a little unsettling for them. We ended up sleeping with the lights on. I felt for sure that the trip was a failure, but in the morning, they were all smiles and excited to explore and run around outside.

It was by no means a fancy get away. But it was quiet and screen free (though, I did read my book on my phone after the kids went to bed). We hadn’t gone away since before the pandemic had hit, and I was getting a little stir crazy, to be honest. It was just nice to be surrounded by a different four walls for a little while and to imagine what life was like in this little community of Four Locks.

On the way home we stopped at Antietam Battlefield. I was never much of a Civil War buff, but being at Antietam, and seeing how vast an expanse it was, and thinking of the number of lives that were lost in this one battle… it made me realize how crazy difficult and horrible the Civil War must have been. I mean any war, really. But thinking about how lacking in technology they were and how difficult military strategy must have been given that lack…

Burnside Bridge and the sycamore tree that saw the Civil War.

And it’s not a road trip without a stop for ice cream. Two cones and a milkshake for less than seven dollars. We were definitely not in the city.

This week’s drawing assignment: We got to work in colour finally! We used pencil crayon (which, I think are called colored pencils in America; pencil crayons is what I called them growing up in Canada). Working in colour is definitely harder than one would think. Like learning to draw, I’m learning that working in colour is about breaking down what we see into parts rather than thinking of them as a whole. So, for example from below, shadows are not just darker versions of the table, but their own colour. Something being darker or lighter is not a matter of black and white, but of blue, purple, yellow, red… it is about the colour, not the light. Just as with drawing I had to learn to draw the lines of the object, not the object itself, I think the same applies to using colour – you draw what is there, not what you think is there.

The rest of the week seemed pretty heavy on life admin stuff as we get ready for the nine year old to go back to school. It fills me with excitement, worry, doubt and hope. As we round the corner of one year of staying at home, I’ve felt like the past twelve months have felt impossibly long but also it’s gone in a blink of an eye. I feel like I’m in much the same place I was, but the baby has gone from being immobile to scaling table tops and the middle child is (mostly) potty trained. Things move forward, even when I can’t.

More signs of the onward trudge of time – this tree that I took a picture of last month is no longer quite so bare:

What We Ate:

Saturday: Can’t remember. Maybe takeout?

Sunday: Roast Cod and Vegetables.

Monday: Tortellini and Ravioli. Carrot Sticks and snacks. Dinner at the lockhouse.

Tuesday: Breakfast Sandwiches. The Husband made dinner.

Wednesday: Penne with Broccolini and Goat cheese from Milk Street Tuesday Nights.

Thursday: Cauliflower Curry Soup from ATK Vegan for Everyone.

Friday: Pizza (homemade. I put anchovies on it, but I had forgotten which side and got it mixed up…. that was not popular) and Loony Tunes.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Spring peeks in

In a final attempt to get a hike in for February, we took the kids to a local woodland sanctuary. Though when we got there, half of it was closed for restoration. Nonetheless, we did enjoy some lovely signs of spring and had a nice amble/romp through the part that was open. We also saw some interesting rough shelters. More and more we are letting the baby walk. She is usually good for about 45 minutes of walking, admittedly at her own pace, so we don’t necessarily get too far.

Last weekend I introduced the kids to the ten hour BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I had forgotten how much of the movie is Colin Firth staring broodingly, and how very little he actually speaks. And how swoonworthy I find that. Though I’m sure in real life such behaviour would actually frustrate me greatly. But I guess that what’s literature (and excellent adaptation of literature) is for.

sleeping baby, cuddling nine year old, and Colin Firth. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Last week, I had an opportunity to be a guest for an opera company’s Zoom workshop for children. I was asked to talk about stage management. Dusting off my stage manager’s brain after almost a year felt like revisiting an old friend. I pulled out my work tote bags and my SM kit to see what was there for potential show and tell. I seem to have misplaced my stopwatch and my drawing template. I also had to create some marked up score pages. I had, in a fit of cleaning last fall, thrown out a whole box of old scores that I had been keeping for who knows what reason. Those scores were almost twenty years old and I decided they were no longer serving me. Welp…. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I regret tossing them – the inner wanna be purger felt quite liberated to have the space back. But then something like this comes along and the inner “keep it just in case”-er feels vindicated.

So I mourned a little and then got to work making a fake score page. There is something so soothing about placing calls in a score – the orderly calm of it, the rhythm of writing, and sticking…. I’m sure I used to take for granted the great satisfaction I get from putting post-its in the right place.

Initially I was a little nervous about the class because I feel like a lot of what we do as stage managers is more internal than demonstrative. It’s not the glamorous storytelling work of singers or dancers or designers. Do we tell stories? We certainly help create and communicate stories. In the end, we taught the kids about stage directions and taking blocking. And also how to say “Thank you, five!” I feel like though these are not creative skills, they are probably good life skills.

Art homework this week was bout the technique of frottage – basically making rubbings, very like what one did in elementary school with leaves and what not. I had hoped to get some outdoor samples for my rubbings – like leaves, or bark, or rocks or sidewalk – but the weather was quite wet all week. Instead I had to look for indoor objects of texture- which is not as obvious as one would think. It seems our current domestic life is one of smoothness and lack of texture. I became quite obsessed with finding items with words that made good rubbing projects. I went around the house touching all the words or lettering I found, to see if it would make a good frottage project. All the letter hunting inspired me to this drawing which I call “Alphabet Soup.” I think, if I were to do it again, I would add a spoon or some more objects of context.

I am trying to mentally prepare to send the nine year old back to school. There is a lot of information out there, but also so much is unknown.

Fun Sunshiny things:

I bought the nine year old one of those shirts with mermaid sequins – the kind where you can flip them back and forth and they change colours. The other day she was wearing her shirt and:

…. she became a human, late afternoon sun disco ball! This shirt and the nine year old’s discovery of the science of reflection – has brought many impromptu moments of sparkle.

Speaking of late afternoon sun and the nine year old, here is another moment of “resistance”. I feel like either it’s a statement about homework, or idly surfing while doing homework.

I put the baby on the tricycle this week for the first time. She seemed to love it. Both the tricycle and the helmet were from when the nine year old was a toddler, and now all three children have gotten use of them.

The four year old peeled a sweet potato all by himself for the first time. He was so proud of himself. I will say he’s been the most reluctant chore-doer of the kids. Even the baby loves to do chores. I read this article from NPR last week about children and chores, and the article talks about giving children three subtasks per hour – the idea being that these really small yet specific jobs helps to foster a sense of inclusion and responsibility. I think this might be the way to go with the four year old.

Pre-COVID I would sometimes go to the library and sit and read magazines for an hour or two. I love magazines. I love leafing through the glossy pages. I love the bite sized articles. I love the longer, more in depth articles. I love the shiny perfect pictures. I love information consumption. I love, let’s be honest, not having to pay for my own subscriptions and not having the paper clutter in the house. Needless to say leisurely magazine reading hasn’t happened for a while. So when I peeked into the Little Free Library by the park this week and saw a copy of Real Simple, I snatched it up. Never mind that it was four months old and talked about Thanksgiving. My brain kind of reacted as if the magazine was a Twix and I had been on a sugar fast. Immediately I pictured myself sitting in a comfy chair with a hot beverage, idly turning pages while planning meals and life organization tactics. This relaxing magazine reading with my cup of tea experience I’d envisioned has – surprise! – yet to happen. But there is a lot of hope invested in that magazine. If I can manage to keep the kids from hiding it.

One last message that appeared in my life this week, peeking at me from the edge of some fabric I was sewing into masks:

What We Ate:

Saturday- Sausage and grapes – the Husband cooked. This is one of my favorite dishes that I never remember to make.

Sunday- Steamed rice and veggies with Tofu from Milk Street Tuesday Nights

Monday- mushroom noodles from Milk Street Fast and Slow

Tuesday- Coconut cod curry and rice from Made in India

Wednesday- fennel and cannelloni bean soup from Milk Street Tuesday Nights.

Thursday- quinoa nori wraps from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone

Friday: pizza (with anchovies!) and Annie

Weekly recap + what we ate – winter sunshine

Even with snow on the ground, we explored a new park last weekend. I haven’t quite been able to have a proper woody hike this month, but I did try really hard to make it outside every day for at least twenty minutes. This park came up on the county recs Winter Activity Bingo sheet. The park had been newly renovated with new play structures and some eye popping murals. The murals were such a joyful burst of colour on a drab winter day.

The kids had a particularly fun time on this disc swing. There is something really happy about seeing two kids on the same swing, the older one holding the younger one up. The swing went pretty high and I found myself a little anxious, but then I reminded myself of the laws of physics.

By midweek the temperatures were into the 40s and the snow was almost all melted. I’m trying to develop a personal metric for when I need to wear my winter coat. 40s is definitely too warm for my winter coat. High 30s is puffer vest layered under winter coat. Low 30s is all that + fleece, boots, and silk long underwear. Hats and gloves throughout, though.

But, signs of spring continue to be seen:

Art class assignment this week was to adopt an artist. This was mine:

I chose Magritte. Ultimately this drawing felt a little derivative to me. I feel like I copied his subject matter more than his style. Though the instructor said with surrealists subject and style are intertwined more so than a lot of other genres.

I had two bunches of kale growing limp in the fridge, so I made kale chips. The last time I had kale chips was over a year ago. Some random friends from college all ended up living in this area and we decided – after ten years – that we should actually get together. Who knew it was the last dinner party we’d have in quite some time.

I’ve had mixed success with kale chips, but this batch turned out pretty good. I seasoned them with coconut oil and curry powder and baked at 275 for 30 mins, flipping half way through. I think I had always baked them at too high a heat and they always burnt. The America’s Test Kitchn recipe said bake at 200 for an hour, but I felt like the results weren’t spectacularly better enough to merit the extra half hour in the oven.

Interesting read this week about why we shouldn’t celebrate the death of Rush Limbaugh. This sentence particularly resonated with me:
“I’ve stopped referring to people as “racists,” “misogynists,” or “homophobes,” detailing their words and actions rather than reducing them to labels. After all, when you call me a name — “snowflake,” “social justice warrior” — I stop listening. I don’t think I’m an outlier.”

This also resonated with me, but for different reasons: I’m a short afternoon walk and you are putting too much pressure on me.

The four year old saw this heart in the wild and made me take a picture:

Weird food thing of the week: Dumpling water soup. We ate the last of our frozen dumplings from our favorite dumpling house this week. After we had the dumplings, I ladled some of the water from boiling the dumplings into a mug and sipped the hot liquid. It’s a habit I learned from my parents. On the one hand it’s a very frugal thing to do, but on the other hand it feel really indulgent.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Roasted Shrimp and Broccoli

Sunday: Pad Thai (recipe from ATK Vegan for Everyone) with sauteed green beans on the side.

Monday: Brussel Sprouts Risotto with dried figs. From Bittman’s VB6 Cookbook.

Tuesday: Black Bean, Corn, Quinoa Salad with lime dressing from ATK Vegan for Everyone.

Wednesday: Salmon burgers and roasted carrots.

Thursday: Cilantro Scallion Chickpeas from Milk Street Fast and Slow. The baby loved this. And the chick peas were the perfect texture. I had been struggling with making chick peas in the InstantPot, and this time they came out uniformly tender. I think adding baking soda as recommended in the cookbook really made a difference in texture.

Friday: pizza (take out) and From the Earth to the Moon – documentary about space travel. I hope that we never look on space travel with anything less than awe and amazement.

Weekly Recap + what we ate – still winter

The weekend arrived… plink plink plink. The sound of freezing rain. It covered everything in a sheen of warped glass. The Husband, from the Midwest, is a big believer of scraping ice when you can, not when you have to. (Actually this is his philosophy for many things). So every couple of hours he went and scraped off the cars. Towards the evening I put my earphones on, bundled up and took a turn at ice scraping. It turns out to be a rather soothing and invigorating task. Moreso when I only did it once the whole day. The slow, persistence of ice scraping and the puffer coat cocoon that encased me allowed me to acheive a sense of flow.

Of course I would probably feel differently if I were in a public parking lot at eleven pm after a long rehearsal. It does somewhat inspire me to scrape the ice off my car during a dinner break to make that 11am experience not so prolonged. That whole future self thanking past self thing….

Monday was President’s Day. Originally I had wanted to go hiking, but snow and ice made that not a great idea. So we had a cozy day at home, doing I don’t know what. The husband and 4 year old planted scallion bulbs. We played Parcheesi. We did manage a walk mid afternoon.

We had a lovely respite from the freezing weather with two days of sunshine and weather in the mid 30s – 40s. I took full advantage of this and took the kids to the playground. I’ve realized that three weeks of quarantine and then weeks of unending snow, freezing rain, and general wet weather has made me a little less precious about letting the kids play on a wet muddy playground. The mud will wash and things will dry. Of course things will probably irreparably dirty, but… oh well.

The two days of sunshine were followed by more snow. Enough to have a snow day in the city, though our school district continued to have virtual schooling. I miss the idea of a snow day. The things that bothers me somewhat is that the school district closed the Equity Hubs and the schools that were hosting care programs. Understandable given the weather, but then why not declare it a snow day for everyone? It is not much of an equity hub if the students who rely on it are pushed further behind. This school year has been so hard on everyone. There is a glimmer of hope in that in person schooling is set to begin again next month but even that is

I had my first art assignment. We were to make an abstract drawing by enlarging something, zooming in on the detail.. I chose a frozen raindrop on a branch, though it didn’t turn out to be as abstract as I wanted. Also – the drawing is on 24″ x 18″ paper, and during our critique session in class, I felt like it’s hard to really understand a picture without knowing the original size. I’m growing to love the fuzzy, forgiving nature of working in charcoal. Having a project to work on feels really great right now.

Fun food for Valentine’s Day. My mother makes beautiful food creations. She taught me how to make radish roses and bunny rabbit carrots. And one Thanksgiving she made this amazing fruit turkey. In that spirit, I made the kids special Valentine’s Day ramen.

Indoor art activity. I find letting the kids do art projects very stressful… the mess!! But they have fun and it’s a good way to pass the time indoors.

This week in the 4 year old’s preschool cirriculum we are talking about the five senses. Later in the week, his older sister was reading Little Red Riding Hood for class (What big eyes you have! What big ears you have! etc.), and the 4 year old says, “Mommy… The wolf is using his four senses!”

What We Ate:

Sunday: Dumplings (the frozen ones from our favorite dumpling place) and braised bok choy. While not as good as getting them from the restaurant, they were much better than any other frozen dumplings you can get at the supermarket.

Sunday: 1 Hour Vegetable Pot Pie from Minimalist Baker – vegan recipe, but I did use regular milk and butter. I love this recipe because it really does take an hour to make, and always tastes like you slaved for hours making it.

Monday: Vegetable Curry with Lemon Peanut Rice from Fresh India. I might have to buy that cookbook – everything I’ve made from it has been really good. Also I managed to find fresh curry leaves – often one of those “optional” ingredients – and I was excited to use them. They made things taste… I don’t know.. fresher? Hard to describe, but I could definitely tell the difference.

Tuesday: Mushroom Ragout with noodles from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone. This recipe is in the Mapo section – it’s Bittman’s vegan take on Mapo Tofu. The four year old loves mushrooms and devoured this.

Wednesday: Roasted perch and catfish and roasted veggies. For Ash Wednesday.

Thursday: Vegetable Barley Soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone. I didn’t have turnips, so I subbed radish and it was really tasty. Good food for a cold snowy day.

Friday: Takeout pizza and Brigadoon. Despite being disappointed that so many of my favorite songs were cut (Come to me, My Mother’s Wedding Day, From this Day On… actually I love all the songs in this score), I still really enjoyed this movie. There’s Gene Kelly for one – so elegant and poised. And also – plaid leggings on the men! It was LuLa Roe worthy.

Weekly recap + what we ate – More snow and celebrations

This was the Husband’s Birthday Week. We had take out of his choice. I baked scones – two kinds! I baked a requested cake. The recipe was from his mother’s recipe box and involved pearl clutching things like margarine and a box of icing sugar – no measurements needed. I had to Google that last one. Thank goodness I did. Apparently a box is one pound. I happened to have a two pound bag and had contemplated using the whole thing.

In these COVID times, an in person birthday gathering was not going to happen, so I organized a surprise birthday Zoom call. I guess one of the advantages of doing a birthday party via Zoom is that you can invite people from anywhere in place and time. In addition to family, we had friends from college and friends from where we are now all on the same call, some of whom were states and even countries away. Having such a cross section of the Husband’s life was one of the nice parts of having a Zoom party.

I wanted to come up with a way to make a Zoom birthday party fun and avoid the awkwardness of a gathering of people who hadn’t met before – the awkwardness potential potentially exacerbated by the Zoom factor. I hit upon the idea of playing Husband Trivia. I came up with trivia questions about Husband and encouraged everyone to bring questions too. I thought the game would go on for maybe 30 minutes, but to my delight almost everyone on the call brought a Husband trivia question and the call lasted an hour. There was much laughter and many fun facts about the Husband gleaned. I was so pleased with how it turned out. I’m not sure that it wasn’t the awkward gathering of random people that I had feared, but the Husband sure had fun seeing everyone and reliving life moments via trivia, so I count it as a success.

And with that, birthday season at our house was over for the year and we took the birthday banner down. From Christmas (Jesus) to the second week of February we celebrate a birthday every two weeks. (And then there is the outlier baby with the fall birthday.) Birthday season does feel a little relentless sometimes, having to plan so many back to back celebrations. But in the end, it does help cheer up the depths of winter to have something to celebrate.

The rest of the week was kind of up and down. I started another drawing class -I have a fair amount of excitement and trepidation going in; I’m looking forward to having weekly art projects, but at the same time, the syllabus seems a little advanced for me. I think I just have to be unafraid of making bad art.

Friday was a day off for the nine year old. I was again caught unawares of this day off. I think in the repetitive days, I sometimes forget to check my calendar. Determined to get outside, I packed some hot chocolate and snack bars and took the kids to a nearby nature center which had a couple miles of wooded walking trails. Babywearing in the winter is always somewhat bulky, so I chose not to bring the carrier or hiking backpack and just let the baby walk. Impressively, she managed to walk over a mile of the hike; I only had to carry her for the final stretch and then mostly to keep her from playing in the mud and water. The kids usually whine a little at the prospect of a hike/walk, but once they accept that this is what we are doing and they get out in nature, they find things to engage their interest. Like playing Three Billy Goats Gruff:

And finding vines to swing on:

The joy of discovering nature’s playground.

Friday was also Lunar New Year. I don’t really celebrate, but I did FaceTime with my grandfather in Taiwan. In past years, there’s always been either a Taiwan school event or the nine year old’s school has a performance, but… COVID. I realized that I’ve relied on others to remind me how to mark the occasion – most years I’m caught unawares when Lunar New Year rolls around. I think I want to get better at marking the occasion. Maybe not to the point where I make a Thanksgiving level meal, but noodles and dumplings and some other traditions might be nice. My parents did send me these really neat apples which were grown especially for the New Year with felicitious messages stenciled on. As you can see, the baby got to them before I could get a good picture, but they are really quite neat.

Just another excuse to post a cute baby picture. But the apple is pretty neat too!

This was also the week of the Trump impeachment hearings. That was definitely distracting and disheartening and took up way too much of my time and emotional energy.

I think I’m also still struggling with finding routine post quarantining. When we were stuck at home, a routine was easy and gave me a reassuring sense of structure. But now that we are back out in the world, there are, despite COVID, things that just creep up and need to be slotted in – book pick ups, dance lessons, errands, friends… I feel like I still haven’t found what the current rhythm is and everything feels a little freeform and hard to account for right now. I think I want to get back to tracking my time – that kind of accountability might be what I need to get structure back.

A funny thing happened the during the first day of art class. We were going around introducing ourselves and giving a bit of our story. And for some reason I didn’t introduce myself as an unemployed stage manager – I didn’t mention a career at all, just that I wanted to learn to draw and that I had three kids running around. It didn’t occur to me until afterwards, but it felt like somehow, I’ve started identifying myself with where I am now, and not what I used to be. I’m pondering that one…. because a year after we packed up our post its and 0.9pt pencils, I’m not sure what claim I still have to my occupational identity.

Fun food things:

Simplify: I made muesli for the first time. And a light kind of went off in my head. I used to make granola, but this is much easier. It’s like granola without adding sugar. Or having to bake it. Basically assemble what seeds, nuts, and dried fruit I had in the pantry, dump it in a container, and …. breakfast! I’ve been eating it steeped in boiling water and sprinkled with berries and it’s been a perfect cold weather breakfast.

Simplify II – I went to pick up some dumplings for the Husband’s birthday lunch. It turns out our favorite dumpling place has started selling frozen dumplings in bags of 40. I immediately bought a bag. I had been wanting to make dumplings for a while, but it is such a lot of work – fun work when you can gather people and have a dumpling party, but rather onerous when you have to do it all yourself. Well, for $25, I can have like homemade dumplings, without the homemade effort. Win!

What we ate:

Saturday: Take out from Full On – sandwiches, wings and onion rings.

Sunday: Cauliflower Curry and Lemon Rice with peanuts, recipes from Fresh India.

Monday: Sushi Take Out and birthday cake.

Tuesday: Fried Tofu with Braised Bok Choy, with farro.

Wednesday: Miso Mushroom Pasta from Milk Street Fast and Slow.

Thursday: Beef Noodle Soup from Milk Street Fast and Slow (cookbook of the week!). Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (Niu rou mian) was a staple of my childhood, but for some reason it took a fancy cookbook from New England to prompt me to make it for myself. It was a pure bowl of comfort and nostalgia.

Friday: pizza (homemade – really tasty whole wheat crust from Mark Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone) and Mary Poppins.

Weekly recap + what we ate – SNOW!!!!

Saturday we went to the park for the first time in weeks. The four year old took his new scooter and the nine year old rode her bike. At the park the kids climbed and ran and swung and hopped. We worked on teaching the four year old how to pump his legs on the swing. There was sun and 40 degree weather (which feels warm these days), and fresh air and a change of scenery and neighborhood dogs playing catch in the tennis courts.

It proved a good thing because it snowed the next day. Beautiful white snow! A thick blanket of it, covering everything.

The snow gave us several days of fun, despite the fact that distance learning has done away with the idea of a “snow day”. I’m a little bit in mourning about that, though one of the teachers had a virtual snow day that consisted of the students throwing wadded up balls of paper at their screen. IRL (as the kids say these days) we bundled up and went outside and built snow forts, shaped snowmen, made snow angels. The kids even helped the grown ups shovel. The four year old found a “snowchair”- a divot in the snow bank left next to our drive way by snow plows. The baby discovered the joy of eating snow… she would find chunks of snow and carry them around in her hand, chomping it like a snow cone. The nine year old delighted in throwing snow balls.

As for me- I loved the quiet and the cold. After the kids went inside, I would just stand outside, letting the cold envelop me, the snow muffling the sounds of outside and day. It was like being in an isolation chamber. And I could breathe and for two minutes not be responsible for anything except my own breath.

Afterwards, there is a quiet satisfaction to seeing all our snowy boots lined up next to the door and our snow suits hung in a row to dry in the bathroom.

The listservs exploded with snow gear for sale and free, a lot of it posted as “like new” and “barely worn”. I guess a lot of people had stocked up in snow gear last year. And then it hadn’t snowed.

I’ve been doing some more cardboard building. When we got our new stove in December, we acquired a new appliance sized box for projects. Also- when the stove was delivered, I asked if they had other boxes and they left a refrigerator box as well. Around the end of the year our cardboard box UPS truck finally collapsed and went out for recycling. For weeks the four year old has been requesting a FedEx Truck while the nine year old wanted an ice cream truck. And because he wanted to give me a challenge, the four year old requested a door in the back that went up and down. Well. I guess I was going to get serious about carboard box building so I did some internet research to find better ways of attaching cardboard together and found these screws designed for cardboard box building. Between those, packing tape and brass fasteners, I feel like I have a decent variety of tools for cardboard box construction, and my cardboard box construction game has been upped.

The back door on the truck is manually operated, but it does go up and down! It took a bit of making and testing and trouble shooting, but a fun challenge.

Also on another day, I made the four year old and airplane as well. There are many modes of transportation inside our house.

Despite the snow, the hyacinths have started to poke their green heads up. Perhaps the warmer weather has confused them. It is so deceptive to see them push their way through the ground so soon. I hope they survive.

Hearts found in nature:

We did some kitchen reorganizing and, taking stock of what I was using and not using these days, I packed away our lunch boxes and lunch containers. I realized that we haven’t really used them in a year and they were taking up a lot of accessible space that would probably be better occupied by things we actually did use. I’ve been seeing articles about pandemic fashion and how that has led people to minimize, and I feel like that’s what I did this week with our kitchen too. When I had pulled out all the containers and stacked them, they seemed like a lot, but I guess back when everyone was packing a lunch, I often felt like we didn’t have enough.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I really got into making these window clings from an art kit the nine year old had gotten for her birthday. Last spring, it seemed like window art was a huge source of solace and connection. Our neighorhood had various scavenger hunts where people would put things in their window for people to look for on their walks – there was a Bear Hunt and a rainbow hunt. I made all sorts of pictures and designs and one day, I asked my husband what word we should put in our window. And he said, “Resist.” It seemed appropriate at the time: resist implied health and resilience.

Making the word was a lengthy project – each letter took two to three days to make becuase you had to make the outline and wait for it to dry, and then add the colour and wait for that to dry before you could peel it and stick it to the window. But back then I was eager for tedious projects that required patience. It seemed at the begnning of the shutdown all we had was time and ourselves.

RESIST has been on our window for almost a year now. Some days, the late afternoon sun comes through the window and projects the word onto our walls. The colour has faded somewhat, but the word still shows up loud and clear. A message and a reminder. I’m contemplating adding another word to it. Not sure what, though.

What we ate:

Saturday: Brisket and Salad. On of our good friends has a smoker and he brought us some of his smoked brisket.

Sunday: can’t remember. ugh. Maybe take out???

Monday: Broccoli tofu panang curry with rice noodles.

Tuesday: Potato curry and a fennel apple salad from Fresh India.

Wednesday: Black bean burgers (from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow), green salsa (from Bittman’s VB6 cookbook) and coconut lime cilantro rice.

Thursday: Cod soup based off a recipe from from Milk Street: Fast and Slow. This was actually a vegetarian soup leek, carrot and potatoe soup from the Milk Street Instant Pot cookbook. I threw in some cod for protein. And just used onions for the leeks.

Friday: Pizza (home made – dough from Bittman’s Dinner for Everyone cookbook) and Once Upon a Mattress – the 2005 television version of the musical. Charming and sweet. The four year old would get up and dance during the dance numbers. The double dance routines going on was adorable.

Weekly recap + what we ate – Birthday cake and back to the world

The three year old is now a four year old.

Four years ago, the country was trying to find its footing under a new administration. There were protests and shock and anger. And into this, a little boy was born. It’s funny, for the past four years, his life and the Trump administration were somehow intertwined in my head – I counted his years as I counted the years until the next election. And now here we are, the administration he was born into has turned over, though its ghosts still linger; the little boy is still here and growing.

But he is his own person, of course. A imaginative, curious, happy-go-lucky little guy. He loves trains, trucks, dancing to his own music, singing at the top of his lungs, books, and going for rides in the car. He drives his sisters crazy, but then gives them big hugs too. I love watching him puzzle out the world in his quiet perceptive way.

A couple days before his birthday, a box arrived at our door step:

Inside was a cake and a tin of cookies. I mean a cake in the mail!! How decadant is that?

The gift receipt indicated that the cake was to celebrate the two older kids’ January birthdays. And the receipt was unsigned. I did some Holmes worthy thinking – the birthday message used the diminutive form of the nine year old’s name, which very few people still use – but finally wrote to Milkbar customer service and asked them. Turns out it was my cousin in LA.

I remember when my cousin was born – and what a cute round eyed baby she was. I have so many great memories of hanging out with her when she was a baby. And now it’s certainly a little strange to realize that my baby cousin is grown up and does adulting type things like send birthday cakes during a pandemic to cheer up a couple of kids. She is an awesome person. And so are her parents (my uncle and aunt) – I’ve always known that they would raise pretty decent kids and it’s turned out to be true.

In other news this week, the baby was evaluated by the County Infants and Toddlers program for some developmental delays this week – primarily speech. It turns out she is on track in most developmental areas, except expressive language and socio-emotional development. The two areas are closely related, though. All our children were quite late to talk, so I’m not terribly concerned. Still, the baby was evaluated to have the verbal skills of a four month old, which is much more delayed than the other children were. It was a little discouraging to have the results broken down like that. However, she is so bright and capable in all other areas, that we are taking a “wait and see” approach, and declined to pursue an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) with the county.

In normal times, if we refused services we would have to get back in the cue and be re-evaluated down the line if she didn’t show developments progress. But given COVID times, the County Infants and Toddler program has a new system where you can check in with a case worker once a month and they will put together an IFSP when you feel ready for it. I perhaps tend towards the “low to no” intervention end of the scale, but I’m really grateful that the county provides these services for when we are ready.

The whole family went to get COVID tests again this week. It was probably not completely necessary, but we did it anyway. I took the two younger kids and had planned to go to the drive through testing site, tossing the baby into the car sans coat and shoes. Of course it was raining. And of course the drive through site wasn’t open. Change of plans! I took us all to a different testing site and had to carry the baby in without shoes or a coat. I definitely not one of my best moments, but oh well. We went in, got our nasal swabs – without fuss or crying from any of the littles! – and went home. Two days later:

Thank goodness.

We had quarantined the appropriate amount and then some, so we were pretty sure we would be negative. But it was reassuring to have the confirmations – if “not detected” can be counted as reassuring.

It’s been a slow emergence from quarantine. After almost three weeks of having gone no further than the end of the driveway on trash day, getting in the car was a little strange. I was almost reluctant to do even that, but I did have errands to run and the two older kids had their yearly check ups.

I was texting with a friend and saying how there is something nice about quarantining in that it’s been giving me an excuse to delay some bigger life decisions, and instead some days I’m just focussing on getting the family from meal to meal.. And my friend wrote back:
“I think what you are doing/ thinking makes total sense… See this thru w/ your family first and worry about anything else later.”
It is probably not sustainable – I mean I do have to file the taxes and figure out what I’m doing with my life, and we have some decisions to make about childcare and schooling and potential summer plans. I feel the the vaccine looming, like a pin that holds the dam in place, the deluge of decisions to be made roaring behind those floodgates.

Well… speaking of meal to meal…

What we ate:

Saturday: Tortellini with Sausage and Red Sauce. Cut up carrots and cucumbers on the side. With birthday cake.

Sunday: Oven Fried Chicken – the nine year old cooked, from the America’s Test Kitchen Young Chef’s cookbook. This was really really tasty – breaded with Corn Flakes. I made some garlic green beans to eat on the side.

Monday: Grain Bowl Marinara with Cannellini beans and Spinach from Mark Bittman’s Vegan Before 6 Cookbook.

Tuesday: Cauliflower Korma with burnt raisins from Fresh India. I found some chapatis in the freezer and we had these on the side.

Wednesday: Sausage and Peppers (the Husband cooked)

Thursday: Leftover Soup day. Realizing we had amasses many containers of leftovers in the fridge, I declared that we would have “eat down the fridge” dinner.

Friday: Pizza and The Peanuts Movie. I was going to make pizza, but then we had car issues so we ended up getting take out. The movie was fine, though I kind of missed the hand drawn charm of the original Charlie Brown movies.

Weekly recap + what we ate – new beginnings

Week two of quarantine. (Clearly there is a backlog of blogging here despite not being able to leave the house…)

Technically the state released the baby from isolation, but the rest of us still have another week. I was a little tickled that the State gave her a “return to work” letter for her employer

I have to admit, Quarantining hasn’t been awful or earth shattering. And honestly, as someone who is easily stymied by decision making, getting to stay home, and having many options taken off the table has been a little too comfortable. Sometimes I think that when Margaret Atwood’s Gilead comes to be, I might not fight too hard. Which is terrifying. But I have to admit there is something comforting about not having to make decisions.

It has been a lot of time in the backyard. We kick the soccer ball around- even the baby manages to walk into it and send it a few feet forward. The kids play swords with sticks, so far no one has gotten seriously hurt. We have dance parties in the backyard.

On Inauguration Day, we had CSPAN on all morning. Usually the schools here take that day off, but not this year- something about the way it timed out so close to MLK day. The nine year old did have her regular Wednesday half day so we were able to watch the ceremony on TV.

I can perhaps be a little cynical about politics and its perpetuating of a staid status quo, but I did find much in Wednesday’s inauguration to give me hope that needles are moving. To me, President Biden, Lady Gaga, Garth Brooks- they weren’t the story of the day. The momentousness of the day was Kamala Harris, Doug Emhoff, Amanda Gorman, the masks worn, the guy who wiped off the podium between speakers – that is to say the things that were unfamiliar to me. And the Obamas, I will admit. They looked pretty happy and fabulous.

I don’t know if my kids will really understand the significance of Kamala Harris as Vice President, how much her presence can redefine who people picture as the leader of a country. And in turn what that presence allows people, especially children, to think are possible career paths. I know we tell our kids they can be anything they want to be, but representation matters too. Diversity matters. Not being the “other” matters.

Fun things:

We got a new kitchen stool. Which seems like such a pedestrian thing to be excited about, but a) quarantining = slow news, and b) it’s one of those rolling library stools. If I could fill my house with library equipment I would be so happy. I’m trying to convince the Husband that we need a library cart now. The best moment was leaving it in the kitchen for the kids to discover, and the three year old and the baby trying to figure out what it was. They stared and stared at it. Finally, the three year old exclaimed:
“You stand on it!”
It made me ridiculously delighted.

I’ve assigned the nine year old lunch duty on Wednesdays when she has half days. We borrowed the America’s Test Kitchen’s Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs from the library and she’s been picking from that. This week she made tostadas. I turned on the oven and supervised, but she did most of it herself. It is definitely difficult to be hands off- I’m a bit of a control freak in the kitchen. But I keep telling myself that the stress of watching her cook is worth the sense of achievement and confidence she gets from being in the kitchen.

At the back of my five year journal, I keep a list of things I’ve learned to do.
2020’s list:
-spatchcock a chicken
-sew masks
-spin yarn using a drop spindle
-make corn tortillas
-replace a window screen
-change a bike tire
-make English muffins.

At the end of last year, I decided that I wanted to learn something that would take a bit more time to master – something that would take practice, rather than just one attempt after watching a YouTube video. (I tried to learn some programming last year, but that didn’t take. I might still try again this year). So I asked my friend Eleanor if she would teach me to juggle.

Eleanor and I were in college together and in addition to be a talented musician and clever wordsmith, she could figure skate and juggle – sometimes at the same time. So she agreed to teach me over Skype. I’ve spent two weeks juggling one ball and now have moved on to two balls. At first, I juggled mandarin oranges, which got a little messy. This week, I dig through my scrap fabric bin and made some juggling balls. I went down an internet rabbit hole trying ot figure out what the best method to make them was. I think this is the over-researcher/ delayed decision maker in me. Eventually I decided to make simple four panel balls and fill them with rice, though some of the more dedicated juggling sites said that was a bad idea for filling. I figure this was a case of done is better than perfect and if the rice doesn’t work out I can always make another set.

At the recommendation of the pediatrician, we are having the baby evaluated for some developmental delays. Because everything is virtual these days, and the evaluators can’t make home visits, they requested some videos of the baby doing her thing. So I spent a fair bit of time following her around filming the random baby things she does. Turns out she spends a great deal of her time: 1) eating, 2) climbing on furniture, and 3) taking things out of containers and strewing them all over the house. I am trying to be very zen about this and savor this age of discovery, but it’s really hard when I’ve had to put the pump parts back into the box for the umpteenth time in one morning. On the other hand, I think her ability to put small objects (duckbill valves) into jars (milk collection bottles) bodes well for her score in fine motor skills.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pork tenderloin and green beans with milk shakes for desert. I’ve always managed to overcook pork tenderloin, but this time I made it on the grill and told myself that a little pink was okay and it turned out beautifully.

Sunday: Roast veggies (sweet potato, parsnip, potatoes) with kale quinoa pilaf. Though I used farro instead of kale.

Monday: Pumpkin (squash) black eye pea curry and tamarind rice from Meera Sodha’s Fresh India. This meal was complex and required spinning many plates in the kitchen to prepare, but actually quite simple to execute as long as you kept things moving along.

Tuesday: Black bean taco salad. Topped with leftover pork tenderloin cubes.

Wednesday: Cabbage fried rice.

Thursday: Lentil Soup. I labelled the leftovers “Nurse’s Lentil Soup” because the recipe came from a Washington Post article with the headline: “This lentil soup is so good one nurse has eaten it for lunch every workday for 17 years”. It’s a bit of an overstatement. I think it says more about the nurse than about the soup, to be honest. Though the soup definitely improved when eaten as leftovers – as soup often does.

Friday: Pizza and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Home made sheet pan pizza – crust was a little thick – I think I got distracted and made it with too much flour. Bedknobs and Broomsticks was a fixture of my childhood. The kids thought it was hilarious.

Weekly recap + what we ate – positivity

A week that started off with much excitement.

The eight year old turned nine!

Crazy to me to think that nine years ago, I was 33 weeks pregnant and went in for a routine OB check whereupon they determined that my fluids were low and sent me to the hospital. And three hours later, the OB sliced me open, pulled out a baby, and we were suddenly parents.

And now that 4lb 8 oz baby is a creative, expressive, energetic, empathetic nine year old.

Since we couldn’t have a birthday party, we asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to watch Star Wars movies all weekend. So that’s what we did. Interspersed with a couple chores and some time running around outside. We didn’t watch every Star Wars movie ever, but we did get through quite a few – Rogue One, Solo, Empire Strikes Back, The Phantom Menace, and The Force Awakens.

At the beginning of the week, there was a call on our landline. Usually we let those go to voicemail, but the caller ID said “MD COVID” so I was pretty sure it wasn’t spam.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hello. This is ___ from the Maryland Health Department. Is this the parent of [Baby’s Name]?”

“Yes, this is.”

“We’re calling to follow up on [baby]’s positive COVID test result….”

**** mental record scratch in my head ****

So that happened.

The lady on the phone was quite nice and very understanding of the fact that one really cannot isolate a 15 month old on their own, so the whole family would be quarantining. I am also somewhat fascinated that they give you a letter for your school or employer that outlines the dates of your quarantine and dates when you can re-test.

Things I’ve googled since talking to the health department:
“difference between quarantine and isolating”
“quarantine protocol”
“CDC COVID quarantine guidelines”
“how to sew juggling balls”
“building with cardboard techniques”

We are completely mystified since the rest of the family had negative test results. Apparently false positives are very rare, so I’m just assuming that the baby did indeed have COVID. The rest of us have been completely asymptomatic, so there is always a possibility that she did get it from one of us, and then the virus passed out of our system before we got tested. We’ll never know. It is frustratingly mysterious.

In essence, life continues somewhat the same as before, only we don’t go to the playground or on hikes, and we’ve finally had to figure out grocery delivery. Thankfully we also have some friends who went on a grocery run for us to our favorite small grocery store. I’ve had to miss winter walks with my college friend, but we’ve had lengthy phone dates.

I have never been so grateful to have a backyard.

Also very grateful for the new oven.

Other Fun Things this week:

Since life is very much focussed at home, I’ve been doing a lot of baking. After three weeks of uncertainty, my sourdough starter started to bubble and rise again. It had been three weeks of dutifully discarding and feeding with an anemic bubble or two of life to show for it. I was starting to wonder if I had killed my starter. I tried to make some bread with the inert starter around the new year, but the dough did not rise despite 24 hours in the “proof” setting of the oven (another feature of the oven which made me really excited). I had killed my starte once before, and in that case the pink scum on top of the starter left no doubt that the science experiment was done. But this time the scant bubbles I saw every morning of this starter kept hope alive. This week, though, some corner turned, and the starter came to bubbly, frothy life. I baked two batches of bread and fresh baked bread brought us much joy.

I’ve been slowly working my way through the Busy Toddler preschool curriculum. It is pretty low key – just 30- 45 minutes of activities a day. Some of the activities are pretty hit or miss in terms of keeping the 3 year old interested. This week, though, tongs and pom poms were surprisingly engaging for both the littles.

Our kitchen window faces east, and it’s getting to the time of year when the morning sky is gorgeous as I make my first cup of tea. Definitely something that falls into the “savor” list:

What We Ate:

Saturday: Pasta and meatballs with Garlic Bread. A dinner request from the (now) nine year old’s birthday weekend. I made turkey meatballs which I then threw into the InstantPot with noodles and tomato sauce. (Love this method for making pasta and meatballs because everything can be made in one pot.)

Sunday: Chipotle. Second dinner request for birthday weekend.

Monday: Tombstone Pizza and Brownies. With cut up carrots. The (now) nine year old’s birthday dinner request. She also made most of it herself.

Tuesday: Roast Salmon and Green Beans with coconut rice. This was really tasty. The salmon was just salt, pepper, olive oil roasted at 400 for 15 mins. The coconut rice was from Run Fast, Cook Fast, Eat Slow. Basically you make brown rice and when it’s done you stir in coconut oil and torn up nori pieces. The green beans were from Meera Sodha’s Fresh India cookbook and featured sauteeing the beans in sesame seeds, ginger, garlic and tomatoe paste. It was really good and easy – a high taste to ease of cooking ratio!

Wednesday: Tofu Ground “beef” with noodles and pickled cucumber, radishes and carrots. A riff on the ground pork and rice noodle dish from Dinner Illustrated.

Thursday: Leftover Chili (The last of it)

Friday: Homemade pizza and Bears, the Disney Documentary – beautiful. Also I was really fascinated by the footage during the end credits that showed how the film crews were able to get close to the animals.